Recent news

‘Winston’s Wish’ in Cheltenham is a charity helping young people deal with bereavement.

Musician and social worker Brett Riches runs a music class for adolescent boys dealing with the loss of a parent. Brett believes music can help young people express their grief without diminishing it with words. By learning how to create music, they can use it to distract or boost them when they’re feeling sad.

On the wall in the classroom is a chart that states why each boy is there. Some of it reads: ‘Dad, Peter. Heart disease, nobody knew about it. He had a heart attack. 2012 … Mum, Carrie. Died 2011. Breast cancer. She died at home.’

The boys are encouraged to say a few words about how they feel and they do so with moving honesty, likening their grief to ‘a train on a winding track’, and ‘as if you’re taken to the edge’. Brett then turns the words into lyrics, while the boys play...

We already know that loneliness can lead to mental health problems such as anxiety and depression, but now experts say social isolation could lower the immune system and impact physical health, too.

Loneliness is on the rise around the world – especially in the UK where half of all 75 year olds live alone and one in 10 are thought to suffer intense loneliness. When partners die and families move away, many older people lose their connection with the outside world.

There is a growing platform of evidence to suggest that loneliness could be contributing to rising health problems. Psychologists at Ohio State University and the University of Chicago recently found that loneliness has a significant impact on the immune system.

The researchers took samples of cortisol, the stress hormone, from a selection of healthy participants every morning and evening. Those who described themselves as lonely also appeared to produce more cortisol, which, as...

Scientists have created an electrical patch (worn on the forehead during sleep), which helps to ease symptoms of depression.

The patch, which looks like a small plaster attached to a battery pack with wires, is said to stimulate certain nerves under the skin which feed into key areas of the brain that affect mood.

During trials of the device, a 50% improvement in symptoms was recorded in patients suffering from depression. The patch has also been revealed to reduce the frequency of epileptic seizures in patients who failed to respond to standard drug treatments.

The device has been named the ‘external trigeminal nerve stimulation patch’ and was presented at a conference at the Royal Society of Medicine in London this week. The inventor, Dr Christopher DeGiorgio (professor of neurology at the University of California), has said that the nerves stimulated by the patch relate to key regions within the brain that modulate both mood and...

Two well known comedians have become Britain’s first ever ‘dementia friends’ via an initiative that has been launched by the Alzheimer’s Society.

The dementia friend scheme looks to reach one million people in the UK by 2015 and aims to raise awareness about a condition affecting around 800,000 people in the country. The initiative offers free information sessions exploring what it feels like to live with the condition.

These volunteer led sessions will take place in town halls and work places around the country to “change the way the nation thinks, talks and acts.”

Jo Brand and Meera Syal took part in one of the very first sessions, which involved a game of dementia fact bingo and various tests of their memory relating to everyday objects.

One test asked participants to recall features of a one-penny coin – shockingly most could only recollect two features. With one in three people over the age...

A study exploring youth attitudes shone light on a growing number of young men who feel deeply pessimistic about their futures.

These young men, who come from skilled or semi-skilled working families, appear to be caught in a kind of no-man’s land – not poor enough to receive extra support and not privileged enough to be on the ‘University conveyor belt’.

Only 30% of these ‘frustrated’ 16-24-year-olds expect to own their own house in the future, compared with 39% of their poorer counterparts.

“These people feel trapped,” said Professor Tony Chapman of Durham University. “They have skills and ambitions – but they have a fatalistic sense that there are barriers that make it pointless to try in the first place.”

Despite only being at the beginning of their working lives, almost one quarter said they’ll never have a fulfilling job and nearly a third said thinking about...

The findings suggest couples struggle to cope without the structure of their old routines. One quarter of respondents said they never imagined their relationship would be so tricky to manage after giving up work.

A significant 80% said they no longer shared the same interests and hobbies as their spouse, while four in 10 admitted they needed to learn to live alone together again without the distraction of work and children. The new stresses and pressures of so much free time led one third of respondents to regularly argue about silly things, while 13% said they ‘irritate each other beyond belief’.

A recent report suggests that tens of thousands of job applicants with Schizophrenia are being discriminated against by employers.

Schizophrenia is a brain disorder that affects the sufferer’s ability to think clearly and decipher fantasy from reality. Common symptoms include hallucinations, hearing voices and delusions.

While there is no cure for Schizophrenia, anti-psychotic medication and therapy can help to alleviate symptoms, and some sufferers recover completely. Part of the treatment often involves getting back into a grounded way of life and a daily routine. It has been revealed that people suffering with the disorder are more than five times more likely to achieve remission if they are in paid employment – proving the urgent need for stable work.

A report by the Work Foundation has said currently only 8% of people with Schizophrenia are in employment, even though the report states many more would like a job. A shocking...

Eating Disorder Awareness Week is between 11-17 February 2013. This year the message b-eat are keen to spread is that everybody knows somebody – eating disorders are more common than we think.

There are many different types of eating disorders currently affecting people around the world, from anorexia nervosa and bulimia to binge eating disorder. Currently it is thought that these mental illnesses are affecting over 1.6 million men and women in the UK, so chances are you know someone suffering.

If you are worried about a friend or family member, it can be incredibly hard to muster up the courage to speak to them about it. Fear of them becoming angry, making the situation worse or wrongly accusing them often means illnesses like these stay hidden for years.

The first thing to remember is that an eating disorder is not a crime – it’s an illness. You are not...

More and more men in their 40s and 50s are hiding depression behind drinking, anger and self-deprecating comments, experts say.

In 2011, 4,550 of the 6,045 UK suicide victims were male, sparking concerns that a combination of social pressure and insufficient support is contributing to a hidden epidemic of male depression.

“It’s worrying that the group most at risk now is middle-aged men because they’re not usually perceived to be a problem,” says Marjorie Wallace, founder of the mental health charity Sane.

According to clinical hypnotherapist Caroline Carr, men tend to pool their resources into functioning well at work, while letting themselves become withdrawn and distant in the home. Caroline, who’s own husband suffered from depression for many years, says men tend to lash out as a response to depression, and often suffer feelings of self-directed anger as a result.

Despite being touted as the healthy alternative to smoking, e-cigarettes could still be banned from public use by the British Medical Association (BMA).

Talks held this week will decide whether regulations should be tightened on the use of e-cigarettes, an increasingly popular product which offers all the satisfaction of a cigarette (including the taste), with none of the side-effects.

One million people are expected to switch to e-cigarettes this year, which some experts believe could save up to five million lives over the next few years.

E-cigarettes consist of liquid nicotine on one end and an atomiser and rechargeable battery on the other. Smokers draw on one end, as they would a real cigarette, and exhale water vapour which looks like smoke. Because there is no tobacco, e-cigarettes do not cause tar build-up in the lungs and is therefore seen as a healthy alternative to smoking.